Tuesday, 14 August 2012

..but it didn't stop me from writing a new blog post. Verkkokauppa sent me my new drawing tablet, which took a while to get used to, but I think we're going to be friends. Just fine for my doodling.I missed the Olympics opening ceremony AND the Olympics closing ceremony, but that isn't going to stop me from writing an Olympics-inspired post, either.

Okay, it's kind of a far-fetched connection. But when I watched an Italian (Rossi) shoot 99 luftballons clay pigeons out of 100, I started to think about all the different kinds of sports, and came to the conclusion that Finland's share requires further investigation. About a month ago I watched a video on YouTube which started like this:

Okay, so there wasn't a cow. But they were totally serious about it and either didn't know or didn't care about how silly they looked. This sport is wife-carrying and I am proud to announce that Leonard (also known as Ari) and his wife are going to take part in next year's wife-carrying championships after I pointed out that they have the best possible setup. The couple in the documentary-style video I watched weren't actually husband and wife - they met each other on a wife-carrying forum, people.

One thing they apparently won't budge on, though, is the serious expression you must wear the whole time, like it's totally a sensible sport.

I saw an exhibition about the sport below at the museum in Kuopio. I don't know much about how it started, but this is what I choose to believe happened:

Anthill sitting is a thing. There is a world record. I don't know anything else.Of course, Finland is (in)famous for its sauna championships. The sauna is usually a relaxing place where you sit peacefully in a dark, hot room while your friend smacks you with a whip. But then at some point, this happened:

Then it wasn't fun anymore. The last tournament saw a Russian guy die because the final two contestants took it far too seriously and passed out. The Russian guy had taken painkillers beforehand to deal with the pain (always an indicator of fun) and had to be dragged out of the sauna, where he died after convulsing. The Finnish guy went into a coma for two months. In spite of that, I promise saunas are nice and relaxing, and don't result in death or coma if you use them properly... hey, where are you going?Boyfriend mentioned that there's also wellington boot (my British for "rainboot") throwing - made, of course, from Nokian rubber. Instead of drawing a picture, I give you: The Boot Throwing website. Read the poem!

Wednesday, 1 August 2012

I sat down today to write a blog post with all the best intentions of drawing something moderately amusing and even providing text to go with it. So I drew it all out on paper, cracked my knuckles in a self-satisfactory manner and then looked for my drawing tablet. I found it. But the stylus was missing. I looked everywhere for it but to no avail, which leads me to think that it's in the same place as the tube of freederm my mum sent me about the last time I used my stylus. I can't find that, either, so the only logical explanation is that there is a small dimension curl somewhere in my house causing my stuff to go missing.

As my intentions of updating my blog were so good, I went online to find a new stylus, but apparently my tablet is so old that I simply had to get a new one with nice colours on it. It will arrive in about 9 days, max. I would say something like "please bear with me!" but I haven't had time to update this since November so I'm sure everyone will be ok for 9 days.

P.S I'm getting married in a month.

P.P.S Here's a picture of my dog for your troubles.

P.P.S If anyone is harbouring a burning desire to know what I looked like in the nineties, here you go.

Tuesday, 8 November 2011

After setting out in my last post to make a step-by-step guide to gypsy tart - foolishly assuming it would be successful simply because I was born in Kent - I failed miserably. Now, however, since I've pwned the thing, I feel okay about posting this pic of what my fail looked like.

DO NOT WORRY if your first attempt looks like this, for I have the answer!We weren't above eating it or anything, but it wasn't a gypsy tart, even if it did taste of scrumptious.

So! Here's how to do it (with copypasting from my previous entry for convenience):0) Become psychic and realise that you will want some Gypsy tart in two days. Place your evaporated milk in the fridge. Alternatively, always keep your evaporated milk in the fridge. Then you don't have to become psychic, which is vastly more convenient. This step is also super important and made half of all the difference.

1) Make yourself some shortcrust pastry. As I mentioned earlier, I like to use Joy of Baking's Pate Brisee (shortcrust). Here's a link, you nice person, you. http://www.joyofbaking.com/PieCrust.html I found that when making the gypsy tart correctly, you get a bollockful of filling, so you should probably make two pie crusts instead of halving the recipe.

Pour 60-80ml of ice cold water into the processor. Tip this out onto a work surface, not forgetting to panic about the fact that it doesn't look like it will come together.Keep calm and carry on. It will form a dough.Told you.

2) Put that in your pie dish and preheat the oven to 175C. Prebake this sucker for about 15 minutes or until it's basically ready.Today I was lazy and used a foil tin but this picture is prettier.

3) Obtain some cold shaky milk.It should technically be 400g, like the sugar. This can is 410g, but I used the whole thing, because I couldn't think of anything to do with 10g of evaporated milk.

4) Whip it with your electric whisk until it actually holds peaks. It will look like whipped cream. This is good. Sorry I forgot to take a picture, I was busy realising where I'd been going wrong.

5) Measure out far more sugar than is good for you.

6) Slowly and gradually sprinkle the sugar into the mix as the whisk is going. This makes the second half of all the difference. Seriously. Bollocks to all those recipes that say "mix together sugar and evaporated milk until foamy". Sod. You. That's not how it's done.

It will be really light and foamy and will do this to the fork:

Notice how full this bowl is compared to what I had before. The milk hadn't reached its full volume at all.How to not do it right.

7) Pour this into your waiting lazy-arsed storebought pastry in your lazy-arsed storebought foil tin. Take care to eat green pesto the night before and not clean it up.Here's another action shot so you can see how viscous the stuff is.

8) Lick your fingers, cause it's yummy.9) Place that into the preheated oven for - I kid you not - 3 minutes. Yes, three. It will come out and you will judge it, but it will be set.

Make your pie crust. Dump everything except the ice water into your food processor. Pulse until combined. Pour the ice water down the funnel. Pulse some more. Tip out onto a work surface, form into a dough and put this in the fridge for thirty mins. Roll it out and line a pie dish. Prebake at 175C for 15 minutes or until done.

Whip your cold evaporated milk until it behaves like whipped cream. Gradually add in the sugar until smooth and foamy and heavenly. Pour this into your ready pie crust and return to the oven for 3-5 minutes. Let cool to room temperature. Gain weight.

Saturday, 5 November 2011

First off, I have to apologise to my brother in law who will no doubt want to turn inside out and slough his skin after seeing the "photos" I'm including in this post. But it's arguably worth it. Gypsy tart is a Kentish delicacy which isn't really available anywhere else. As far as I know. There could be a tribe in remote Indonesia making them, but in that case I POSTED ABOUT IT FIRST, LOSERS.

In any case, Kent used to be divided into two along the River Medway. People had nothing else to do so they invented names for themselves depending on which side of the river you were on. Imaginatively, one side called themselves "Men of Kent" and the other side, in an equal show of creativity, called themselves "Kentish Men". Nowadays no-one really cares or remembers these names and I'm pretty sure it's because of the gypsy tart. In any case, it's been on school menus forever (at least my mum used to eat them at school and that's good enough).

Like all traditional foods, it's quite ridiculous. Firstly because you fill it with nothing more than milk and sugar (milk has calcium!) and secondly because you have to whip it for longer than the safety instructions on my electric whisk will let you operate the whisk for.1) Forget that you'd decided to make a blog post and make a pie crust from scratch using Joy of Baking's shortcrust pastry. http://www.joyofbaking.com/PieCrust.html Remember just in time and take a photo.You can ignore my dirty surface there, I won't mind. So in there I have just over 100g of cold butter, a tablespoon of sugar, 175g of plain flour and a bit of salt which I didn't need as the butter was salted. It's been one of those days.

2) Following Joy of Baking's instructions, pulse it a bit until crumbs form. Add some iced water and mix a bit more until it does this:3) Tip it out onto a surface and panic, because it doesn't look like it'll come together.

Oh God Oh God, loose crumbs.

4) Keep calm and carry on.Put that in the fridge to chill and bring out the big guns.

5) Obtain some shaky milk. That's evaporated milk for those of you who are not suffering from a bout of the British dialect.

Also grab some muscovado sugar that you are sure you stored in a ton of airtight clingfilm but nevertheless looks like it could survive a nuclear war. Test your theory by putting it in the microwave with a cup of water in an attempt to soften it. Also find a packet of "fariini" sugar for backup. Try to think of a translation for fariinisokeri and fail. Demerara would do as well.

6) Rejoice, for your sugar did what you wanted.Say thanks to your sister for the measuring cups. They are awesome.

7) Here's the 1/2 cup cup.8) Put everything in your mixing bowl that your boyfriend just got you for your birthday and for which you are really pleased but are nevertheless trying to find some chauvinist accusation to use as leverage the next time you argue about something silly.9) Mix it all up in yo' mixer. And I mean mix. Mix it for the 15 minutes I advise you to mix it and when you get to the point where you doubt that the crazy English woman actually meant 15 minutes, go for at least another 5.It will go all soft and light and coffee-coloured. This is actually what correctly prepared gypsy tart filling should look like, only set. Mine didn't turn out this way. Sorry. Life's a bitch.

10) Roll out yo' pastry and pour in the nom. Preheat your oven to 200C, as well.11) Pour in the nom -pic.Put it in the oven, whereupon it will deflate, leak, go dark and runny and generally terrify you. Wonder what on earth you did to deserve such treachery. Keep it in the oven until it bubbles like magma and you worry for the safety of those around you. If you didn't whip the sugar and milk enough like me, and you didn't go poking around in there mid-cooking time like I did, then you can mix a little bit of cornstarch and a little bit of water into the mix just before cooking and it will thicken it right up without messing with the taste (I did it mid-bake and it set almost instantly). I still have one can of evaporated milk left and I'm determined to get the right consistency and colour by changing to demerara sugar, which the recipes I've seen at home use, but which I couldn't find here for the longest time. The sagas will continue..

Ingredients:

-Your preferred pie crust, frozen or freshly made-300g some sort of brown sugar-1 can of evaporated milk. The one I have says it's 410g in sensible measuring units which I think is 14oz of silly.-Popeye arms or a kitchenaid.

Friday, 14 October 2011

I bet you were scared. Anyway, hello! I'm back after some time, again. I'd like to post more drawings instead of just informing you that I'm "back" only to disappear for eons but you see there's half a mitten and three balls of wool in the only space where my drawing tablet could ever possibly go and apparently moving The Wool is a problem for me. It was a project and I refuse to accept defeat. I made a deal with myself that I'd finish the mitten and get it out the way and the space would be free for the tablet but then I accidentally my money at a market and now I have nepalese yak mittens (ty, yaks) and demand has fallen for air-conditioned blue mittens in the house. The outlook is bleak.

I'd also like to point out that there's been a lot going on with work and the kind of art I post on my blog cannot be rushed, my friends. I will have you know that some thought goes into it. But mostly it can't be rushed because I have some sort of OCD hangup about the abandoned mittenlet.

I don't want my blog to die, though, so to counteract the effects of my oddly anal prioritising I intend to post a few non-drawing things. I keep trying to forcefully impart the recipe for Gypsy tart on people around the net, but so far I haven't had much success. So, as the rules of the Internet state, when you can't get people to listen to you, you post on your own blog and sit defensively on it muttering that this is YOUR blog and you can do what you want and suchlike.

I can say with almost certainty that there will be a gypsy tart on the horizon, as my mum is smuggling me some shaky (evaporated) milk when she visits in a couple of weeks. I'll probably post a recipe anyway as there aren't that many online and it's quite rare (despite the utter awesomeness of the tart). However I'd feel really nice and popular about it if I knew someone actually wanted to read it :D So if you feel like that person, leave me and my feeling of self-worth a comment.

In the meantime here's a picture of my dog. Because it's MY BLOG and I can do what I want and suchlike.

Friday, 22 July 2011

Today I subjected my pearly white and nerdy skin to all kinds of parasites and bugs. Voluntarily, too. There is a highly elusive and popular berry found in the undergrowth in Finnish forests. It's called a mesimarja, and it's not what we went looking for. Here's a picture of mesimarja anyway, since Boyfriend found some.The value of these berries is probably something like 5 euros. Super rare.

We went looking for the second most popular berry - cloudberries. In Finland they're known as hilla, lakka, muurain, suomuurain and even valokki. Calling it the wrong name will cause your boyfriend to shout about the berry not being the same as varnish, also called "lakka" (think lacquer).This is not varnish.

So we piled the dog and Boyfriend's mum in the car and went to the most mosquito-infested place in Finland. Boyfriend has so many mosquito bites on his back that he looks like a burn victim. The dog loves the forest. She bounces around crashing into bushes and chasing mosquitoes. It's really hard to walk there since it's dense forest, so she just bounces forwards and hopes she lands somewhere safe. We suppose.

Luckily for us the rest of Vihanti had either not stumbled across this particular place or else have at least some sense in their head and stayed at home, because we got TONS of berries.Boyfriend's mum got half a large bucket as well. Look at them all! Look! Here's another picture.

Boyfriend's mum is of an almost militant opinion that the berries should be eaten straight from the forest with sugar and cream. So we did:

But we still have two buckets left. We sorted the berries into perfect, alright and "okay those are for "soup"". I'm making jam out of the "alright" group, but I'm having problems of thinking of something sufficiently scrumptious to make out of those "perfect" berries, since we spent about two hours sweating and being eaten alive in the middle of a swamp-forest. Ideas are welcome :)

P.S I just googled and someone made a toffee-cloudberry swiss roll. Well done, that person.